LF, google the 1964 book The Official American Ski Technique. In that book you will see the first sentence state clearly that "The American Ski Technique presents nothing really new." They go on to explain that the AST is derived from the Austrian system that was developed in 1948 and was in use at the time. AST was born in Alta at a national ski association and certification meeting back in 1958. The intent was to codify a unified standard since at the time multiple schools of thought existed. Some followed celebrity skiers and were cult like and others simply suffered from poor translations of the technical matter. Adding to the confusion is the idea that unlike Europe the larger geography of the US contributed to some isolation where organic systems developed due to the lack of communication like we enjoy today. Even in Europe nationalism effected what "brand" of skiing would be taught in a particular country. So in the minds of guys like Bill Lash, Paul Valar, Jimmy Johnston, Doug Pfeiffer, Junior Bounous, Max Dercum, George Savage, Willy Schaefler, and Herbert Schneider something needed to be done to establish consistency in the US ski teaching world and the publication of the AST book was that something.

Interestingly enough a paradigm shift away from "final forms" was going to happen a few years later and that is largely attributed to the teachings of Georges Joubert and the Grenoble University Club he ran so successfully. Functional skiing over final forms is one such idea PSIA adopted but in AST's infancy (1958-64) the idea of final forms was an integral part of the system the AST founders developed. It just was not applied in the same way as it was in Europe where a linear teaching method was preferred. Scheme "F" as it was called in the AST book featured plugging in a student into the process and the instructor following a prescribed sequence without any variations. When the student popped out the other end it was thought they would know how to perform the final forms quite well. They also wrote about the AST book including more theoretical ideals and principles than other methods that they claimed omitted too much of the theory and mechanical principles. Myself I find it very interesting that in applying more theoretical and scientific methods they concluded final forms not only existed but were an objective of their methods. Although they also point out those forms were not universally applicable. Variations in climate, physical make up of the skier, and mental make up of the skier would influence how that skier performed these final forms. So some wiggle room existed in that model. As it does today.

Subsequent manuals from PSIA were influenced by outside forces and like the baby boomers who were a large target market, ski teaching methods evolved accordingly. (We were so caught up in the expression of individual freedom and raging against convention back when we were young). Ron LeMaster in his tribute to Georges Joubert spoke about this tumultuous time and how from a technical standpoint the first AST book had the best technical section ever written under PSIA's flag. He also suggested any serious skier needed to read the books written by Joubert. I would second that advice and go one step further to say read Ron's updated book Ultimate Skiing and the transcripts of that tribute to Joubert lecture he did a few years ago.

Eventually through the years the existence of final forms became a convenient thing to assign the label of a really bad thing and many feared to question the idea since PSIA made it so clear they didn't and still don't believe in final forms. In the 96 manual the Center Line Zone was included as reference maneuvers and a tool for comparative analysis (MA) but many mistakenly saw them as a return to the final forms thinking of the founding fathers of PSIA. From a purely logical viewpoint if we eliminate errors (variations from the reference movements) what is left would be, in effect those pesky final forms that don't exist according to the political powers that control PSIA.

In the 2001 Alpine Technical manual Meagan Harvey wrote about the evolution of the skills concept and a rebuking of the idea of a rigid final form methodology. The multiple learning tracks tied to European models were replaced by a more student friendly focus and a unified American message that would better serve the diverse skiing population of the US. The stated goal of being able to develop a teaching and skiing style devoid of rigid skill biases made sense but again if you trained for a test during this time frame the movement descriptors for the reference maneuvers used in cert tests spelled out an unmistakable style that even though the maneuvers were not called a final form they sure felt like final forms.

Meagan's twin sister Katy became the head of the Aspen schools around that time and as I have mentioned before she visited our early morning training groups to make sure we were practicing and teaching Aspen's brand of skiing and not going off on a tangent from the Dartmouth Race team coaches. While I could see her logic it certainly left me with the impression that varying too far from PSIA established ideals was not to be tolerated. Fair enough it was her school and what she wanted was what we were hired to do. Was there some wiggle room in the vertical zipper, heavy emphasis on independent leg steering, skiing into and out of a countered stance through the last third of a turn and the first third of the next turn. A little less than a rigid final form but along with the pocket guide to effective skiing that delineated effective and ineffective visual clues to the movements being used, it certainly came across as a narrower view than the PSIA company line about No rigid final forms because they are outdated as soon as they are established.

A few years later Annie Black was talking about the most counter rotated stance needing to occur at the same place as where the highest edge angle would occur. Which is decidedly straight from USSA racing philosophy about traverses and being mostly square to the skis while traversing between turns. I sort of figured Tony might have had something to do with that but when Eric Lipton did a trainers clinic and echoed that and used a step turn progression to establish the idea of the strong shaping phase being higher in the turn and the finish and transition may not be where the most countered stance would occur I wondered if PSIA had changed their model. Bob Barnes was simultaneously working on the foot squirt / feet passing the core through the turn completion / initiation where maximum counter would likely occur at transition. Not that that is required just that it is more likely. Bobby Murphy (d team at the time) and Bob didn't seem to be on the same page about this and Barnes eventually went to Copper. Why that happened is his story to share but it certainly appeared like Barnes strayed a bit too far from PSIA's doctrine. In our school Leigh Perini eventually became our training manager and echoed Eric's ideas. Considering her husband Doug was on the demo team the ideas she espoused seemed to be a direct offshoot of directions the d team was heading. The idea of a very countered stance late in the turn seems to be losing favor in what she talked about. But who really knows what the latest thinking from the team is. All I really know is through my experience over the years I would say examiners can be all over the place when it comes to ideas and being away from Aspen and their having a less representation on the demo team it is harder to get things like the white paper. New manuals may help out a bit but without picking the brains of the new authors about the R&D behind the new manuals, it is hard to say exactly where things like PSIA's vision are heading.

I am sure many of our folks like Kneale can fill in a lot of details I have not included (that 40 year pin on his avatar is so very cool) and maybe even Weems might be enticed to grace us with some of his time and share with us his recollections of all of this. I certainly hope so since he was and is alway at ground zero for a lot of this stuff.

Anyways I am not the official historian for anyone, I just have been around a lot of folks who had a hand in past manuals and the white paper sort of publications. Hope that helps

LF, google the 1964 book The Official American Ski Technique. In that book you will see the first sentence state clearly that "The American Ski Technique presents nothing really new." They go on to explain that the AST is derived from the Austrian system that was developed in 1948 and was in use at the time. AST was born in Alta at a national ski association and certification meeting back in 1958. The intent was to codify a unified standard since at the time multiple schools of thought existed. Some followed celebrity skiers and were cult like and others simply suffered from poor translations of the technical matter. Adding to the confusion is the idea that unlike Europe the larger geography of the US contributed to some isolation where organic systems developed due to the lack of communication like we enjoy today. Even in Europe nationalism effected what "brand" of skiing would be taught in a particular country. So in the minds of guys like Bill Lash, Paul Valar, Jimmy Johnston, Doug Pfeiffer, Junior Bounous, Max Dercum, George Savage, Willy Schaefler, and Herbert Schneider something needed to be done to establish consistency in the US ski teaching world and the publication of the AST book was that something.

Interestingly enough a paradigm shift away from "final forms" was going to happen a few years later and that is largely attributed to the teachings of Georges Joubert and the Grenoble University Club he ran so successfully. Functional skiing over final forms is one such idea PSIA adopted but in AST's infancy (1958-64) the idea of final forms was an integral part of the system the AST founders developed. It just was not applied in the same way as it was in Europe where a linear teaching method was preferred. Scheme "F" as it was called in the AST book featured plugging in a student into the process and the instructor following a prescribed sequence without any variations. When the student popped out the other end it was thought they would know how to perform the final forms quite well. They also wrote about the AST book including more theoretical ideals and principles than other methods that they claimed omitted too much of the theory and mechanical principles. Myself I find it very interesting that in applying more theoretical and scientific methods they concluded final forms not only existed but were an objective of their methods. Although they also point out those forms were not universally applicable. Variations in climate, physical make up of the skier, and mental make up of the skier would influence how that skier performed these final forms. So some wiggle room existed in that model. As it does today.

....

Trying to digest this in small chunks....

Let me know if I've got anything wrong here, folks.

--"Final forms" was a focus within an instructional process used in Europe. Is a final form a body position?

--This process featured a linear teaching method. A linear teaching method does not necessarily require body positions as goals. Did the linear thing get thrown out with the final forms?

--When it was brought to the USA from Europe, the teaching process initially got garbled in translation.

--PSIA was formed to organize teaching in the USA to produce a national standard that would eliminate that confusion.

--PSIA adopted a teaching process with a focus on "final forms" and used it from 1958-64.

--PSIA's manuals during that era included a bunch of mechanical principles and theoretical stuff supporting the "existence" of final forms.

--Some wiggle room was left for individual variations.

--A few years later the teaching process focusing on "final forms" was rejected. Had it produced problems? Was it failing?

Subsequent manuals from PSIA were influenced by outside forces and like the baby boomers who were a large target market, ski teaching methods evolved accordingly. (We were so caught up in the expression of individual freedom and raging against convention back when we were young). Ron LeMaster in his tribute to Georges Joubert spoke about this tumultuous time and how from a technical standpoint the first AST book had the best technical section ever written under PSIA's flag. He also suggested any serious skier needed to read the books written by Joubert. I would second that advice and go one step further to say read Ron's updated book Ultimate Skiing and the transcripts of that tribute to Joubert lecture he did a few years ago.

Eventually through the years the existence of final forms became a convenient thing to assign the label of a really bad thing and many feared to question the idea since PSIA made it so clear they didn't and still don't believe in final forms. In the 96 manual the Center Line Zone was included as reference maneuvers and a tool for comparative analysis (MA) but many mistakenly saw them as a return to the final forms thinking of the founding fathers of PSIA. From a purely logical viewpoint if we eliminate errors (variations from the reference movements) what is left would be, in effect those pesky final forms that don't exist according to the political powers that control PSIA.

In the 2001 Alpine Technical manual Meagan Harvey wrote about the evolution of the skills concept and a rebuking of the idea of a rigid final form methodology. The multiple learning tracks tied to European models were replaced by a more student friendly focus and a unified American message that would better serve the diverse skiing population of the US. The stated goal of being able to develop a teaching and skiing style devoid of rigid skill biases made sense but again if you trained for a test during this time frame the movement descriptors for the reference maneuvers used in cert tests spelled out an unmistakable style that even though the maneuvers were not called a final form they sure felt like final forms.

....

Again, let me know if I've got any of this wrong.

--The technical writings from PSIA's Final Forms years were good. Ron LeMaster's Ultimate Skiing is the current equivalent for those old manuals.

--In the baby boomer years (70s-80s??) PSIA came under the influence of the cultural attitude celebrating individual freedom and denigrating convention, so Final Forms was rejected. I assume these were the years of Functional Skiing? How did that differ from Final Forms? was there still a linear teaching progression?

--Final Forms acquired an increasingly bad reputation as time passed.

--The 1996 PSIA manuals replaced Final Forms with The Center Line Zone.

--This approach featured Reference Maneuvers, which some thought were a revival of Final Forms. PSIA insists the Reference Maneuvers were not Final Forms. (Would someone give an example of a Reference Maneuver?)

--By 2001 the manuals are all about the Skills Concept, and the Center Line thing has been abandoned.

--Today's Skills Concept approach is meant to provide "student friendly" instruction for a diverse American skiing population that is averse to rigid teaching progressions.

Meagan's twin sister Katy became the head of the Aspen schools around that time and as I have mentioned before she visited our early morning training groups to make sure we were practicing and teaching Aspen's brand of skiing and not going off on a tangent from the Dartmouth Race team coaches. While I could see her logic it certainly left me with the impression that varying too far from PSIA established ideals was not to be tolerated. Fair enough it was her school and what she wanted was what we were hired to do. Was there some wiggle room in the vertical zipper, heavy emphasis on independent leg steering, skiing into and out of a countered stance through the last third of a turn and the first third of the next turn. A little less than a rigid final form but along with the pocket guide to effective skiing that delineated effective and ineffective visual clues to the movements being used, it certainly came across as a narrower view than the PSIA company line about No rigid final forms because they are outdated as soon as they are established.

A few years later Annie Black was talking about the most counter rotated stance needing to occur at the same place as where the highest edge angle would occur. Which is decidedly straight from USSA racing philosophy about traverses and being mostly square to the skis while traversing between turns. I sort of figured Tony might have had something to do with that but when Eric Lipton did a trainers clinic and echoed that and used a step turn progression to establish the idea of the strong shaping phase being higher in the turn and the finish and transition may not be where the most countered stance would occur I wondered if PSIA had changed their model. Bob Barnes was simultaneously working on the foot squirt / feet passing the core through the turn completion / initiation where maximum counter would likely occur at transition. Not that that is required just that it is more likely. Bobby Murphy (d team at the time) and Bob didn't seem to be on the same page about this and Barnes eventually went to Copper. Why that happened is his story to share but it certainly appeared like Barnes strayed a bit too far from PSIA's doctrine. In our school Leigh Perini eventually became our training manager and echoed Eric's ideas. Considering her husband Doug was on the demo team the ideas she espoused seemed to be a direct offshoot of directions the d team was heading. The idea of a very countered stance late in the turn seems to be losing favor in what she talked about. But who really knows what the latest thinking from the team is. All I really know is through my experience over the years I would say examiners can be all over the place when it comes to ideas and being away from Aspen and their having a less representation on the demo team it is harder to get things like the white paper. New manuals may help out a bit but without picking the brains of the new authors about the R&D behind the new manuals, it is hard to say exactly where things like PSIA's vision are heading.

I am sure many of our folks like Kneale can fill in a lot of details I have not included (that 40 year pin on his avatar is so very cool) and maybe even Weems might be enticed to grace us with some of his time and share with us his recollections of all of this. I certainly hope so since he was and is alway at ground zero for a lot of this stuff.

Anyways I am not the official historian for anyone, I just have been around a lot of folks who had a hand in past manuals and the white paper sort of publications. Hope that helps

Finally finishing this up...

Thank you so much jasp.

Any answers or clarifications from anyone out there?

--Around that time Aspen ski school firmly supported "the vertical zipper, heavy emphasis on independent leg steering, skiing into and out of a countered stance through the last third of a turn and the first third of the next turn."

--This approach can be seen as relatively rigid even compared to PSIA's list of Effective and Ineffective Visual Cues.

--A few years later there was a difference of opinion on where maximum counter should occur in a turn (apex or transition) amongst PSIA elites. (Perhaps this is why "counter" is a bad word to be avoided in PSIA circles.)

--Today PSIA examiners are all over the place, and PSIA manuals do not prescribe turn mechanics rigidly. (What effect do people think this has on Certification Skiing Exams?)

These weren't presented as forms but outcomes that we could expect to see our students experience as they learned to blend the skills they were learning. (By the way, the skills concept predates the centerline idea. Centerline was a supposed to be a way to understand how the skills blended together to produce a variety of outcomes.) We had to learn to ski the maneuvers as demos for teaching and exams. Is it any wonder that most instructors took centerline to mean First teach wedge turns then teach wedge christies then teach open Parallel etc.

A final form wasn't just a body position, although that was involved. Think more along the lines of school figures in ice skating, specific movements producing specific outcomes.

When I was in the PSIA fold late eighties and very early nineties, I took centerline to me not too edgy and not too skiddy. One of the buzz words I remember the most is "shaping " turns, which I took to mean, controlled steering forces of a relatively flat ski. The controlled steering forces produced a round rather than "z" shape turns but not especially railed or carved turns. Warren Witherell's book , the Athletic Skier describes this playing field of skiing on pages 86 and 87. The progression of turns from wedge through Christie to dynamic parallel implied a greater level of skill development required in order to progress through the evolution of turns. YM

The political climate of the country was changing and the whole PC movementwas growing during that time. Center Line always struck me as that, Not too this, not too that. My ex called it vanilla skiing because the style was boring in her eyes.

Perhaps one of the best descriptions of final forms is by Ron LeMaster. In the book Ultimate Skiing he describes how final forms were analogus to learning to dance. If you learn a foxtrot and they play a tango that foxtrot lesson is pretty useless. Skiers need to be more versatile than that.

The official American Technique Manual with its emphasis on "seven basic principles and eleven final forms", created its share of dissidents. The explanatory mechanics of the technique failed to show how it was possible to turn the way most of today's racers and hot shots do. The pedagogy with its emphasis on the final form, resulted in a whole breed of ski instructors who tried to ski and teach like automatons-rigid, artificial, stereotyped and awkward. The younger instructors realized the differences and so the generation gap hit the PSIA smack in the middle of the credibility gap.

Quote:

A demonstration team from north of the border showed how the Canadian ski teaching technique had bridged the snow-gap between racing ways and those of the ski schooler. In their words-by compression, which is the quick compacting of the body during the initiation phase of a turn. Or to use a more familiar phrase, down un-unweighting; or French one, avalement-which means to swallow or absorb-aptly named since the deep, quick bending action of the legs literally swallows up the shocks of mogul mashing, and he resultant lowering of the hips unweights the skis. And of course, at that time, you turn them-no, not by the old final form basic principal of heel thrust, but-with a swiveling action of the feet. Austrians call this technique wellen - for riding the waves, so to speak.

Can you imagine such heresey! For years, the official dogma has had it that "the indisputable laws of physics have proved" (that was a favorite phrase), that up unweighting was the way to do it.

There is also some interesting historical perspective about how the divisions came to be...

Ahhh, the fog begins to clear. That article indicates that "Final forms" was misinterpreted by a majority of instructors and that misinterpretation caused robotic skiing in those instructors. So final forms was abolished.

The eleven things - final forms - which caused all this rigidity are, again (from that 1970 manual 4ster posted in another thread):

1. Straight running

2. Straight snowplow

3. Snowplow turn

4. Traverse

5. Stem turn

6. Forward sideslip

7. Christie uphill

8. Stem christie

9. Parallel christie

10. Short Swing

11. Short swing on a traverse

Does this make sense to anybody?

I'm not seeing it. Being able to do each thing on this list, and maybe even teaching people to ski in this order (not rigidly, but adjusting to the conditions of the day and client profile),

If the use of down-unweighting, avalement, whatever, at turn transition fixed the robotic-ness, as the article implies,

then up-unweighting was the issue. Up-unweighting isn't on the list of final forms.

I continue to believe having such a list of things that are worthy of teaching and learning, with a general sense of teaching/learning them in sequence, is not a bad thing. I'd like to see that list have transition actions on it. Retraction, extension, release this way and release that way, when to be countered and when not to be countered through transition, when to focus on knee angulation and when to use hip angulation, and so on, are all things that could be spelled out. Several big, general progressions would be good, differing on what the terrain and conditions might be. I'd call it them "reference progressions," indicating that in an ideal situation such a progression should be a pretty good one. Rigidly following them would be BAD. Knowing them and working off them to custom-design a lesson for each client would be GOOD.

My opinion is that the 11 final forms were missing a few forms which may have included the secret techniques being used by "racers and hot shots" that the PSIA somehow overlooked while constructing the official manual in 1964. Some of this was carry over from the Austrian stuff, as JASP has pointed out numerous times, where the ultimate goal was to be able to make a christie turn, which is a non-carved turn; where up unweighting and twisting about on really big wooden boards was the technique required in the 40's and into the 50's.

However...

What I read somewhere else, can't remember where now, was that somewhere along the line they felt that ski students should not be taught the final forms as the method of teaching, but that ski instructors should still be able to perform the final forms as a form of demonstration. The final forms represent a visual image of what a skier should look like if they are putting everything together right.

Of course in order to be able to perform those final forms down to some level of perfection, various opinions about HOW to do that would circulate, and those would be the skills taught to students and between instructor peers I suppose.

I wasn't there, but I think back in the day instructors were held to much more precise standards about how the final forms should be demonstrated in order to be considered a good ski instructor. That would have led to rigidity and robotics. perhaps if the robotics had included some of the high performance aspects mentioned in the article as missing, maybe the perception may have been different, and maybe if instructors had not obsessed on overly perfected final forms, almost as a form of competition in and of itself, that may have produced different dynamics as well.

Today we have to obsess over perfectly doing a wedge christie to pass those certification exams, and we don't even want our students to be able to do them perfectly. Same thing for pivot slips, hop turns, and so on. Every instructor I know is robotic when demonstrating a wedge christie in front of students, because that assures that the movements are visible. But it's a demo, people.

Once an instructor learns how to do a wedge christie that isn't a stem christie, does it mean that instructor is doomed to being a robotic skier? Of course not. Instructors should be able to move from demonstrating something in front of students to skiing for fun and pleasure and back again.

Moving between these two attitudes - perfection and play - is an acquired skill, by the way. Acquiring it is a good thing. Throwing out half of it (the perfection part) because it's difficult to be able to go back and forth isn't a good thing.

Is the difficulty of acquiring such versatility, e.g. being able to shift from perfection to play, related to the hate for final forms?

As strict as you think the final form demo exams are now, I have heard that back in the day it was literally like they were out there with a measuring tape, checking ski tracks down to the inch. Hands had to be held up in just such the right position, etc. I do not know if they had as good of an understanding about certain key movements as we do today. I think they were focused on the overall appearance matching certain qualities and thereby if someone was attaining that appearance, they must be doing some things right, as opposed to looking for a few key movements and allowing some latitude on the overall appearance, as they do today.

I do think we have final forms we have to demo today, but there is quite a bit more latitude then there used to be. It seems like examiners today are supposed to be looking for certain movements they want to see, at least that is what they tell me.

So for example, in the wedge christie, they are looking for a release or flattening of the downhill ski while the uphill ski turns into the fall line as the CoM moves inside, then finally the inside ski is matched to the outside ski, all the while steering the lower half under the upper half.

This, as opposed to a stem christie or some other aberration where the skier braces against the edged downhill ski in order to stem the uphill ski and then leans out to brace on that one and parks and rides around.

There are definitely fine detailed minutia still today for how to do these final form demos correctly in such a way that certain key movements are happening and our examiners are looking for those key movements. Is that final form? I say yes. Perhaps with emphasis more on specific key movements as opposed to overly focused on some overall appearance.

I do agree with you LF, that when key movements are learned, even on a wedge christie, those movements translate all the way up to the biggest and baddest all mountain skiing.

I have a friend who is a lifetime professional race coach for a race and academy program. He has coached all levels including national, WC and Olympic. Next time I ski with him I'll have to ask him to demonstrate a wedge turn and a wedge Christie just for fun. I'll have take a look at what he does. He is a hell of a skier. YM